rias centenary convention great scots in an age …...rias centenary convention great scots in an...

RIAS CENTENARY CONVENTION GREAT SCOTS IN AN AGE OF DISEQUILIBRIUM

14 MAY 2016

IAN RITCHIE

© Ian Ritchie – May 2016 – Great Scots in an Age of Disequilibrium 2

Preamble:

There are good reasons why it has been said the Scots created the modern world.

During the Scottish Enlightenment men like Adam Smith (1723-90), a moral philosopher and pioneer of political economy, and David Hume (1711-76) laid the intellectual groundwork for a uniquely Scottish way of thinking: philosophical empiricism, scepticism, and naturalism, intellectually creative yet practical and clear thinking. Combined with a work ethic, material values and commitment to universal education a fertile ground was created for the growth of creativity and innovation.

However, as we know, more is needed than hard-headedness and realism to create a cultural atmosphere where inventiveness and creativity thrive.

Perhaps Charles Wilson (1869 – 1959, who invented the cloud chamber) put it best:

“The Scots in particular were possessed with that romantic speculative inventiveness crossed with the mentality of a chartered accountant.”

‘Romantically speculative’: head and heart! Implicit is yearning – emotion, creative dissatisfaction: This can be done better, differently. In other words, some recognise that the world is not quite the way they want it, wish to improve it, and so we get the idea of progress.

I gave a talk 7 years ago at the RIAS Convention in Dundee entitled ‘Scottish Innovation – A Cultural Dilemma Today’ in which I explained the conditions and ingredients required for innovation – from the political arena to knowledge and the exchange of information.

My talk today, Great Scots in an Age of Disequilibrium, will address a broad issue: the emerging information from the field of neuroscience and how this ever-increasing body of knowledge will, I believe, inform architecture.

‘Disequilibrium’

Just as during the Age of Enlightenment – when the radical advances in industry, political

philosophy and the sciences began that during the next 300 years would change our societies and

world irrevocably – we are living in turbulent times.

The exponential growth of information technology and democratisation of knowledge is swirling

us into ever-increasing uncertainty. In fact, science has shown us that the only certainty about

certainty is uncertainty!

Yet with turbulence and uncertainty come great opportunities – freewheeling, playful, inspiring

us to change to overcome our fear of the future.


Disequilibrium is a spur to creativity – it shakes us out of stasis.

“The things we fear most in organizations—fluctuations, disturbances, imbalances—are the

primary sources of creativity." Alfred North Whitehead

I seem to have spent my entire career on the verge – between art, architecture, engineering,

landscape, theatre and writing. This is a fertile interface, a dynamic, pan-disciplinary world. In

the natural world where distinct eco-systems overlap, the intermix accelerates natural selection.

In human systems when formerly separate cultures and peoples, technologies and forms of

communications, philosophies and music, arts and sciences, languages and educational systems

meet, extraordinary creativity blossoms.

Creativity and Innovation in Architecture

The pressure to be creative and innovate in every field has become all pervasive. It doesn’t

matter what you do, you must be innovative; otherwise you don’t exist. This is today’s

fashionable mantra.

In the world of architecture we’ve unfortunately slid to a star architect system in which the

quality of a building or design is judged by its appearance and novelty. Creating a visually stunning

building with ego-bound “signature” shapes shows skill, but it only means you’re astute enough

to design to the aesthetics of the zeitgeist.

But what does ‘innovation’ really mean for architecture in today’s world beyond the next trendy

thing? How do we even recognize genuinely innovative architecture? It may not be instantly

recognisable as radical internally, nor do I suspect, externally – but it may come to be subtly but

recognisably human-centred.

When we think of humanity we also think of emotions – our “human side”. Beauty, sensations and

emotions are vital for humans! And when so many of our social and emotional experiences have

and are becoming more and more virtual, the role architecture can play in real-time experience

should make us curious.

I do not believe that enough architects think enough about the physicality of touch – the haptic

world – and how the spaces we create can affect our emotions and our behaviour. As working

architects we seldom if ever address the issue of the physical/sensual body as against the

geometric body in our buildings and few if any contemporary buildings are deliberately designed

to enhance/affect our emotional and intellectual experience of the world.

Concentration of touch sensitive cells Kubric’s 2001

There is a map which conveys the human body’s sense of touch as a geometric figure. It offers a

very interesting departure point for designing architectural spaces and surfaces if we begin with

touch rather than the traditional geometric figure in order to introduce the idea of humanity into

our buildings – to build them from the inside out.


Inverted Pyramid, Louvre

When I worked with IM Pei at the Louvre (as a director of RFR) creating the inverted pyramid, a

key question was how to stop people hitting their heads on the inverted tip. To overcome this,

another small pyramid was placed underneath it - a stone one - and what is fascinating is that

when people go there they put their hands in the space between the stone and the glass

pyramid. In a way they're trying to prove through touch that nothing is there, absence, a bit like

Kubrick's 2001 monolith – to touch is to know.

And even as technological advancement brings with it endless opportunities for architects to play

with new and interesting materials, at the same time, we may have to come to terms with the

idea that we need to become trained in an environment with a scarcity of means.

Perhaps genuine creativity and being innovative is when architects or designers find a way of

solving a problem that wasn’t solvable when the usual procedures were applied – the usual

procedures that no longer work in times of transition. Transitions can be dangerous - especially

to set ways of thinking!

For example what if the built environment was designed in such a way that it could be easily and

infinitely refashioned? It’s not a new idea. The Crystal Palace was designed to be taken apart.

Design for deconstruction or disassembly is a design philosophy and set of strategies that

acknowledge that the vast majority of composed and purpose made buildings have a limited life

span.

The RSC Courtyard Theatre was originally designed as a practical temporary place, quickly

designed and erected to serve as a 1,000 seat theatre-space in anticipation of closure and

rebuilding of the main RSC theatre.

existing theatre, section, new TOP


During its transformation into The Other Place we were able to put into practice our

understanding that the relationship between people and buildings, spaces and scenography, runs

much deeper than matters of practicality.

new TOP, studio theatre, access

ground level rehearsal studio, costume store

Just as the interaction between actors working together creates a play out of a written text, and

the interaction between human beings creates a neighbourhood or culture, much of the time

when an architect is genuinely being innovative and creative, few people notice because most of

the time he – or she – is part of a team. It’s teamwork – knowing when to lead and when to listen,

when to be together and when to have time alone - that enables innovation, and often

breakthroughs occur in building innovation when research and ideas are shared between different

professional disciplines.

Foyer, foyer booths


the new windows into the Corten enclosure of old Courtyard Theatre

And I can speak from my own experience when saying that in collaboration with engineers, artists,

musicians, physicists, mathematicians and poets, my practice became renowned for our

innovations and technical inventions, particularly with glass and metals.

INNOVATIONS: IAN RITCHIE ARCHITECTS & RICE FRANCIS RITCHIE


1981-85 Rice Francis Ritchie (RFR)

La Villette City of Science, Paris world patent: structural glazing that hugely influenced the appearance of architecture

GLASS INNOVATION

1981-85 Rice Francis Ritchie (RFR) La Villette City of Science, Paris

light transmitting thermally insulated roof

LIGHT INNOVATION


1984 Rice Francis Ritchie (RFR) Lintas Bridge, Paris world’s first all glass bridge incl. glass floor

GLASS INNOVATION

1985 Ian Ritchie, J-L Lhermitte & Francois Bastien Creating 3D Light forms from ‘controlled’ ionised plasma at EDF Laboratories, France

LIGHT INNOVATION


1985 Ian Ritchie Architects

Pharmacie, Boves, France first use of ‘interwoven’ stainless steel mesh as architectural cladding

WOVEN METAL SKIN


Dubai Pearl Monument – laureate (unbuilt)

‘The Phantom Fixing’ published in the AJ 1987 world’s first structural glass fixing through one leaf only of a doubly curved two- layer toughened laminated glass panel GLASS INNOVATION


1987 Ian Ritchie, Olivier Auber, J-L L’hermitte, Guilhem Pratz, Peter Rice Poiesis Generator ‘France – Japan’ Monument - laureate (unbuilt) shell structure of woven titanium wire and carbon fibre

WOVEN METAL SKIN


Natural History Museum Ecology Gallery, London

first application of structurally glued glass to glass fixing in a public building

first use of 6mm low-iron glass in architecture GLASS INNOVATION



Stockley Park, London Double glazed Planar™ developed with Pilkington for this building, along with the ‘Stockley Pin’

GLASS INNOVATION

1991 Ian Ritchie Architects + Pilkington Reina Sofia Museum of Modern Art, Madrid world’s first glass installation which transfers wind load at the corner of the building through the glass edges GLASS INNOVATION



Bermondsey Station Jubilee Line, London Underground world’s first public transport glass bench seating

GLASS INNOVATION


Terrasson, France – laureate ‘The Phantom Fixing’ applied to fix the glass roof ‘lake’ on the Terrasson Cultural Greenhouse

GLASS INNOVATION


1992 Ian Ritchie Architects with Pilkington

Light Tunnel, Ingolstadt, Germany

Photo-reactive coated glass LIGHT INNOVATION


IR

1994 Ian Ritchie Architects + gmp, with mero + Seele jv

Leipzig Glass Hall, Germany.

The world’s largest glass hall, no expansion joints, unique joint assembly, robot cleaners

GLASS INNOVATION

1993 - 99 Research initiative of Ian Ritchie Molecular Doping of Glass to limit crack propogation. Image © Professor Greaves GLASS RESEARCH


1994 Ian Ritchie Architects + gmp

Leipzig Glass Hall, Germany. world’s largest glass hall & first inclined glass fire escape doors with Seele

GLASS INNOVATION

1996 Ian Ritchie Architects + Arup

London Regatta Centre boathouse roof - stiffened catenary stainless steel 6mm

STRUCTURAL SHEET STEEL


IR

1997 Ian Ritchie Architects and Paul Gillieron Acoustic Design

Crystal Palace Concert Platform, London

world’s first outdoor application of an ‘active acoustic system’ SHELL ACOUSTICS

1997 Ian Ritchie Architects Locker Wire Weavers; Adrian Billingsley

Plymouth Theatre Royal Production Centre, TR2 woven fabric 0.4mm warp + 0.3mm weft phosphor bronze wire

‘SOFT’ WOVEN METAL SKIN


IR

1998 Ian Ritchie Architects, Arup

The Spire, Dublin, Ireland

the world’s tallest sculpture and single shell structure STEEL SHELL STRUCTURES

IR

1998 Ian Ritchie Architects, Litech and Wilbey

Alba di Milano Light Monument - laureate

first manufacture of woven fractured optic fibres

(warp) and stainless steel wire (weft) NEW WOVEN METAL + LIGHT SKIN


IR

1998 Ian Ritchie Architects + Arup

Scotland’s Home of Tomorrow, Glasgow

introducing the ‘outdoor room’ in high rise DOMESTIC SPACE

IR

1999 Ian Ritchie Architects + Per Lindstrom

Blue Gold Exhibition, Oberhausen

Kevlar laminated fabric cone, 50 metres high WOVEN LIGHT SKIN


IR

2000 Ian Ritchie Architects, Kathryn Gustafson, RFR

EdF 400,000V Pylons, France STEEL SHELL STRUCTURES

IR

2009 Ian Ritchie Architects, UBLicht & Hamburg Licht

Zebede Gekko

1500 lux @ 10w high performance task light LIGHT INNOVATION

And this brings me to my own current research passion – passion because I admit to being a

romantic as well as a hard-headed Scot:


Dreaming of a Project IR etching

Since embarking more than five years ago on the design of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre for Neural Circuits and Behaviour at UCL I have become more and more interested in neurodesign.

Neuroscience is beginning to provide evidence for what the best architects have always known intuitively: that we experience our environment on all sensory levels. We engage with it emotionally, sensually and physically long before we are able to make an intellectual judgement about a place or building.

Creativity: seeing the connections between two seemingly unrelated things

Creativity is the capacity to bring old elements into new combinations and depends largely on the ability to see relationships. The habit of mind which leads to a search for relationships between facts becomes of the highest importance in the production of ideas.

When designing the SWC building, we used the results of recent research in the cognitive sciences to create a uniquely flexible, responsive and adaptive laboratory environment. First, we studied neuroscientists to find out how they really behave in their labs rather than some idealised goal or preconceived notion - to allow THEIR perceived and actual needs to be met - to promote their interaction with each other while supporting their individual creativity and intellectual endeavours.

We benefitted enormously from John O’Keefe, [2014 Nobel Laureate] along with Peter Dayan, who heads the Gatsby Computational Theoretical Unit. They were our key scientific advisors from the beginning as we designed the building from the inside first, and then began to wrap the spaces externally.

Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience at Oxford, discovered non-rod, non-cone ocular photoreceptors within the eye that detect the overall amount of light in the environment and then align the body clock – providing us with our sense of time. That internal circadian clock is responsible for regulating the brain’s core body temperature, brain wave activity, hormone production, cell regeneration, and other biological activities.


SWC façade

A perfect example of neuro-scientific research giving the architecture added value! We asked

ourselves how to allow appropriate natural cycles of light into the building, particularly during

winter months in our northern latitude and for people who spend a lot of time indoors.

One entire wall of the SWC is of translucent structural cast glass, which not only allows soft

daylight to filter into the building while reducing the need for artificial lighting but also allows

the changing light of day to night to register on the wall.

IRSainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL

SWC day to night and south wall at night

It is a refinement of material we had used in previous projects – cast and spun glass. We developed

and had tested with Frener and Reifer, an Italian/Austrian company, a new structural cast glass

assembly, composed of two channels, each with its own surface characteristics: externally self-

cleaning through its subtle ribbed profile, and internally smoother to allow the scientists to use

it as a continuous whiteboard.



SWC continuous whiteboard

The two channels are connected by a polyamide extrusion enabling the toughened glass assembly

to span 4.2m AND to carry the load of opening windows without the need for any addition framing

or support. The insulation is white spun-glass fibre, a product we first used at Cite des Sciences

in Paris in the 1980s at the same time as we, RFR, were developing structural glazing.



Concept elevation from IR etching ‘dreaming of a project’

‘Toe-to-toe’ very low-iron cast glass channels with spun white glass insulation

SWC wall Howland Street

Because we now know the ability to control aspects of our environment is vital to human well-

being, integrated clear glass windows allow individual scientists to control how much fresh air

and westerly sunlight they get.



And the colour blue – or more precisely 480 nanometres. According to Russell this is the

wavelength that makes us most alert and is visible in the morning sky. Throughout the lab areas

of the building the soffits are painted a spectral wavelength blue of 480 nanometres, and in non-

lab spaces - concealed blue lighting edges the acoustic ceiling panels.

We also introduced biodynamic lighting in below ground-level circulation areas where only some

spaces are naturally lit.

The scientists are free to personalise their space.

SWC office spaces

People need both isolation and togetherness – at different times. If these needs are met we are

more contented, if not we can become depressed. Offices, classrooms and hospitals are

particular building typologies in which these factors are especially relevant.

Will architects accept these challenges and respond with not simply the pragmatic answer but

with a synthesis of the physical and aesthetic dimensions?


SWC 5th floor roof garden

Views of nature and access to outdoor spaces are correlated with mental and physical health in

terms of heart rate and stress levels, improved mood and cognition. At the SWC the roof garden,

seminar-cafeteria and administration are all at the same level - designed to encourage feelings

of contact and interaction with the natural world – wildlife and the weather.

Within the SWC the adaptable nature of the spaces allows for both private offices and write-up

desk spaces and their lighting to be intimate within the community. John O’Keefe instigated a

survey of UCL student researchers as to whether they would like individual cubbyholes or open

spaces for their write-up areas.

SWC write-up - carrels

To our surprise, and that of the client, the consensus was for open areas. To accommodate both

ease of interaction and privacy if desired, the edges of the write up desks are for the most part

curved, providing an extra sense of privacy while reflecting the wave of the building.

SWC double height lab / write-up – carrels

In an environment where many individuals are engaged in creative work, the opportunity for

natural cross-communication between disciplines is especially important. The fact that there are

multiple happenchance spaces and visual connections within the building is what we have


understood and believe to be important on the basis that interaction is a vital aspect of research

and being human.


SWC interaction spaces (accidental)

Principal circulation routes are designed with sightlines through the entire building. Along these

are wider areas to encourage chance encounters and conversations.

SWC interaction area (intentional)

These areas for chance encounters are physically soft and acoustically tempered, and also hard

– some spaces intentional, others accidental.


SWC – GCNU lecture + tea atrium interaction space

A tall lecture and seminar space for the theoretical computational neuroscientists – and a space

which can be engaged with ‘accidentally’ from the windows at high level.


SWC main stair – Ariadne’s ribbon

The central stair makes reference to Ariadne’s ribbon and has generous landings - even the fire

escape staircases are spatially more generous than is customary.

The most difficult barrier to connexity within buildings is vertical separation


IR

IR sketch concept section of flowing adaptable and interrelated lab spaces

Sainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL

SWC double height labs

This is the primary reason why we designed the labs as two-storey open houses, offering visual

connection between floors of activity as well as the potential for vertical spatial experiments.

The second is that neuroscientific research indicates humans prefer designed spaces with high

visibility and connectivity with multiple vantage points as well as protected space. We also prefer

visual volume and permeability that permits the greatest depth of view. These may promote

environmental comprehension, and entice curiosity and engagement with a place.

I received an unexpected affirmation that our design was working in this regard from one of the

Principal Investigators, Adam, during the SWC’s opening ceremony. During his speech he said:

“The building is working better than Ian and his team could have expected. Through the careful

positioning of glass I have long views through the building.

I have already connected with the other scientists in the building and started collaborations

because I can see what is happening everywhere from my office.

I can see when a visiting scientist arrives, or when the GCNU are gathering for a seminar and

join in. I can also see the doors to the rooms within the labs through the double height space,

so I can see if one of my post-docs is happy or not when they walk out of their lab room after an

experiment, and approach them to find out what went well, or what they need.”


“This building is shockingly good”

SWC undulating north façade

We were concerned that not just the inhabitants of the building but people in the surrounding

streets and neighbourhood should also feel comfortable with and be interested in the new

building.

There are both artistic and metaphorical elements to the exterior facade in addition to its

functional aspects. Why is there a wave in the building? There are several reasons: outside, the

curves echo the party wall rhythm of the Georgian architecture that surrounds it. It also suggests

calm – the undulations of the sea and light, and also a metaphor for the melting polar ice caps.

Artic sea light ripples ice block concept

The undulating façade also reflects my sense of humour. Meeting different neuroscientists across

the world I became acutely aware of their pan-disciplinary skills - physics, biology, electronics,

chemistry, electro-mechanical engineering, sometimes philosophy and music, etc.

The wavy façade suggests that the experimentalists have a significant brain wavelength, while

the theoretical computational neuroscientists are on another wavelength altogether – hence the

increased ‘frequency’ in the middle where they are housed over three floors.


SWC south wall

The whiteness of its mass refers to an iceberg. As the facade turns the corner of the building the glass becomes more immaterial, as ice melts.

melting corner

The building’s south wall is fractured, as would an ice flow, and also ripples in response to the wind.

Ideas of fracturing

For me, beauty is non-linear. This is captured in the pixellated south wall’s movements in

response to the wind - forming wave patterns as does a field of wheat - and the way light behaves

on the micro-undulations of the cast glass.


IR

light on the north wall

The aesthetics of the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre have a fugitive, even ethereal quality which

comes from the idea of composing with and using glass to exploit soft reflections through its

micro-profile and to allow the façade to be ‘played’ – the louvres - akin to piano keys – are

dynamic rather than static.

North façade


IR

light on the south wall

There is also applied art to the building – all related to the brain - as a way of communicating its

inside activities to the outside, making the building less anonymous to passers-by.

colonnade pixels of Bach music

The colonnade has a thousand suspended pixels – also moving in the wind. One side contains J.S.

Bach: Musical Offering (1747): Ricercar a 3 – recommended by the Principal of the Royal Academy

of Music as one of the mind’s greatest ever compositions.



colonnade pixels of UCL Nobel lauréates pixels

On the other side are eleven portraits of Nobel Laureates in Physiology or Medicine who have

stepped into UCL at some point in their careers. One bay of pixels was left blank for the next one

to come out of the Centre. It turned out to be John O’Keefe on his way in!

These portraits are recognised at ‘sweet’ points as one walks along – a little play on perception.

“The distillation of three perfectly interweaving lines, of shared melody in perfect form and

harmony, reflects the ultimate in unveiling the mysteries of the musical mind. Bach’s famous

visit to Potsdam to visit Frederick the Great on May 7th in 1747 inspired a theme in his 'Musical

Offering’ which conflates the Renaissance knotty-ness of the old Ricercar with the staged

luminosity of the fashionable Enlightenment. As artists so often do, the return to first principles

at the end of a creative life leads to works where not a note, a word or a figure could be removed

without reigning incoherence. Bach's raw scientific data absorbed and lost into the realms of the

ear, heart and mind is just the start of a 40-minute work which hurls the 16th-century towards

the late-19th in a single arc of creative genius.”

Professor Jonathan Freeman-Attwood BMus, MPhil, Hon RAM, FKC, FRNCM


colonnade vitrines

There are also five ‘vitrines’ towards in the colonnade which explain some visual phenomena and

the way the brain can confuse us: - distortion, deception, inversion, illusion and perception.

projected firing neuron

Finally there is a facility to project large neuro-images on the west end wall.

A book will be published later this year explaining the research and the journey of the design

team, scientists and funders to achieve the SWC.

NEURODESIGN IN THE FUTURE & WHAT WE SHOULD BE DOING

Architects should be keen to understand how to provide spaces that work best for the occupants.

As we are discovering, the challenge is that our needs change throughout the day, across time,

according to our state of health, or the tasks we’re being asked to engage in. Nothing stays the

same, but predicting change is fun.


IR concept inking of flowing adaptable lab spaces

How can architects design for adaptability and flexibility? For us they are different aspects of a

building’s design.

Adaptability is a positive attribute, and we sought with the Sainsbury Wellcome Centre to give

the scientists as much freedom as possible to change their environment – physically and with a

‘plug & play’ services approach with naturally lit spaces, that are also provided with black-out

and lighting controls that can be tuned to their needs.




‘plug & play’ services

Adaptability is physical. We designed the SWC’s lecture theatre and brasserie so that they can

easily be sub-divided as conditions require, accommodating everything from intimate focus and

discussion groups to large audiences for public lectures, exhibitions and parties.


Every space in the building has been designed to accept change – and change driven by scientists

over the next 60 years.


lecture theatre adaptability

Flexibility is softer - light, sound, temperature, smell and colour. Rather than prescribing a set

light level throughout the building, we have designed the lighting to accommodate the specific

needs of the scientists in addition to the use of the space as a whole.


IRSainsbury Wellcome Centre at UCL Ian Ritchie Architects 2016

view from New Cavendish Street

This is one building - unique - designed using the most recent knowledge available around the

specific needs of the individuals who inhabit, work and play within it. According to the scientists,

it seems to be working.

As architects, we create the future, not the present.

Advances in neuroscience and information technology have given us the tools to mitigate the

deleterious effects of the previous two centuries of innovation. If we are learning something in

this age of new technologies and concern for the environment, it is that we can help people react

and behave following natural, living rules.

So how can architects become more genuinely creative?

First of all, to innovate successfully depends on adequate knowledge: knowledge of the subject,

and a variety of extraneous knowledge to produce new and original combinations of ideas.

Technical skill must be so far developed that it is never a hindrance to the flow of ideas.

Secondly, innovation and creativity often begin with collaborators who have to be capable of

shedding their protective skins to enable a barrier–free exchange to take place: this is the primary

prerequisite for cultural fertilisation and innovation.

Third, creativity depends largely on the ability to see pan-disciplinary relationships. Therefore

the more an architect knows not only about his own subject but across disciplines beyond

architecture, the more his/her creative potential.


CONCLUSION

All design work is political in the ultimate sense, in that we are trying to produce a world that is

better to live in, where people understand more, where people are less oppressed and live less

dreary lives, where exchange through discussion and open availability of information is essential

for understanding. And when this includes cultural exchange, a major prerequisite for creativity

is in place. Never underestimate the importance of friction, because that is when steps are taken.

Friction doesn't always have to be combative, it can just mean slowing down.

There is no reason that in the near future that we can’t create a network of spaces and

connections that make a more vivid, liveable and efficient city possible - streams of information

and people flowing freely and continuously, balancing connexity and interactivity of the city.

“By believing passionately in something that still does not exist, we create it. The non-existent

is whatever we have not sufficiently desired.”

Nikos Kazantzakis (1883– 1957) writer/philosopher

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